One of my favourite comic artists ever. His comics are equal parts bleak & funny. Found at https://pbfcomics.com/comics/the-talk/
Not that I’m trying to pick apart a darkly funny comic meant to hilight the bleak future we seem to be barreling towards… But where do they get their nutrient paste?
I don’t see a greenhouse so actual food is unlikely, and given the barren nature of their surroundings, either the dwelling is embedded into rock, or they don’t go anywhere outside, hence the lack of a path or tracks. So no buying food.
Are they immortal? Cursed to live on a dead rock until the sun expands past the orbit of the earth? (I choose to believe this)
And here I thought my day was bad…
Maybe they have like an underground greenhouse with artificial light and irrigation
That was my next thought, but then where do they get their power, water, and oxygen?
I suppose it could be like a “reserve the surface room for a day” kind of thing, and hundreds of people live down below, with enough space for greenhouses and algea pools for oxygen production. Geothermal power, or simply a solar farm out of view, and deep underground natural water reservoirs…
I still think the immortal people in an indestructible house is probably the best bet.
As a chemist,
Air: A Sabatier reactor uses CO2 and Hydrogen to make methane and water, then the methane can be heated in an oxygen-less atmosphere (pyrolysis) to get hydrogen and elemental carbon, and you can electrolyze the water to get oxygen and hydrogen. the hydrogen from the methane pyrolysis and water electrolysis is enough to use again in the Sabatier reactor, while the oxygen can then be used again to breathe.
For the food: A bit harder, for a closed loop like for the air you would need to chemically recycle pee and poo which IS possible, just insanely complicated (and gross, and dangerous).
A better method for food, if you had access to water, would be to turn water into steam, then use the elemental carbon from the Sabatier reactor and the steam to make syngas.
Once you have syngas, make Methanol with it, and then convert the methanol to Formaldehyde with a catalyst.
Once formaldehyde is obtained, use the Formose Reaction to make various sugars.
Then, use the sugars to eat or to feed animals/plants.
Idk about other stuff tho, all the proteins, vitamins etc
it could probably be possible to make them with genetically modified yeast/bacteria that feed on the sugar, but AFAIK this doesn’t exist yet (the above part of air+water to sugar is possible with current technology, tho)
But where do they get their nutrient paste?
Nanotech-fabricated in corporate labs, delivered through underground pipes. The paste will flow, so long as they do their remote jobs (porn for the mother, bot farm management for the father, exposure to AI test output for the child.)
Optimistic to think it’s fabricated with nanotech instead of just pureé’d people and green dye.
No point in wasting the good stuff on the poors.
The problem with using pureé’d people is the transportation cost. C’mon now, think of the shareholders.